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Super 8 Slitter Perforator


Samuel Berger

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Hi all,

 

As of a few years I have lost touch with film hobbyist Paul Cotto who was working on his own perforator for Super 8. It is obvious that the project is not going to move forward, as this was over a decade ago.

 

I'm very interested in building my own or getting one built somewhere. The idea is to slit and perforate 35mm film and load it into Single-8 and Super 8 cartridges.

 

But before I try to reinvent the wheel I would like to know if anyone else on these forums has attempted this before. I can't imagine it being an agonizing brain twister, I mean, it's just a machine that punches a sequence of holes into film.

 

 

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You know nothing about film perforators. The grinding of one of the punch legs for a straight-sided hole with rounded corners involves 60 operation steps. The fit between punch and die is according to IT 2, i. e. ± 0,0012 mm or ± 0.0000472". Of course, there is a trick to achieve that in useful time but one needs the proper installation. You speak of several thousand $$$$ cost for a tool set.

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You know nothing about film perforators.

That is ABSOLUTELY TRUE.

 

But...that doesn't keep me from hiring someone who does. ;-) Or at least thinking about it. I think Paul paid $5000 for the dies.

But I saw that in Kiev the other day some guy converted a sewing machine into a film perforator. I guess the machine part of the deal must be very simple.

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Wittner has sold off many machines when they did close their Ammersbek plant in April or May. Some of them did not find a buyer and were scrapped. I visited them in March and decided to obtain a small slitter (35mm to 2 x 16mm), a R8 perforator, a 16mm perforator and a DS8/Super 8 perforator. Those machines where from their spare part stock (they called it scrap heap) - so they need to be cleaned, lubricated etc. If I find the time I will refurbish them to look beautifully like their "good" machines, which look splendid, like new. (BTW they did move all those "like new" machines to their new location in the south of Germany).

The ones I did obtain are also much smaller compared to their production machines, which is a big advantage for me as I am a private person and not a company and my space is very limited. If you look at the pictures you will see that a lot of work is ahead to make them look and work like new. But the most important thing is they included excellent perforating tools so I can do good quality after the machines are up and running. I will be able to perforate Regular 8 / Double 8, DS8, Super 8, 16mm one row and double perf then. But there is a looong way to go as not only my space but also my time is very limited unfortunately. Nice project for long evenings in the winter time :)

 

post-14545-0-39021800-1506450719_thumb.jpg

 

post-14545-0-41180600-1506450723_thumb.jpg

 

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DS8 available from ON8MIL ( UK ) .... https://www.on8mil.com/product-category/8mm-film-packages/ds8_films/

 

John S :rolleyes:

 

They added 100' rolls to the site at my request and I ordered from them last week, came quickly and efficiently; all the way to Texas from Great Britain. Haven't shot it yet but looking forward to it!

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Seems expensive until you think that it's equivalent to 4 rolls of Ektachrome 100D which is going for $48 each at B&H photo in NYC. Although equivalent isn't probably the right word since it's an older stock...

Agfa RSX50 must be cracking on for 15 years old now.

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  • 4 years later...

Hi,

I am sorry for the late reply. I did not look into here for quite a while.
Haven’t found the time to refurbish those machines. Finally gave them back to Wittners some years ago. Don‘t know if they are still there. But I did not want to scrap them - so bringing them back to „mothership“ was (for me) the logical conclusion.

All the best,

Maik

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On 11/11/2023 at 7:45 AM, Kamran Pakseresht said:

For anyone interested - I did find a video of someone who modified a sewing machine to perforate super 8 film: 

...and then at the end he shoots the demo reel handheld so we can't tell anything about the results. 😅

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